jeanphony

The perfect infography must synthetize complex information in a...

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:54:41 -0500

The perfect infography must synthetize complex information in a simple visual representation, which is not easy. The following examples take information architecture to another level by making it beautiful.

Information is beautiful: 30 examples of creative infography via www.designer-daily.com

Go vote for InCharge Battery Station in the Greener Gadgets...

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:52:40 -0500

Go vote for InCharge Battery Station in the Greener Gadgets competition

early twitter video…

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:47:50 -0500

early twitter video…

Bugatti Veyron… Mmmm

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:34:17 -0500

Bugatti Veyron… Mmmm

Even our heroes make (spelling) mistakes. - Michael Beirut at...

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:37:58 -0500

Even our heroes make (spelling) mistakes. - Michael Beirut at Creative Mornings via www.swiss-miss.com

A hands-on demo of the iPad at Engadget

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:21:21 -0500

A hands-on demo of the iPad at Engadget

Funny that they chose Vignelli’s subway map (designed...

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 13:24:24 -0500

Funny that they chose Vignelli’s subway map (designed while at Unimark) as the PDF to display…

via cache.gizmodo.com

Bob Noorda, Who Changed the Look of the Subways, Dies at 82

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 22:55:30 -0500

Bob Noorda, Who Changed the Look of the Subways, Dies at 82:

“I remember when Bob came to New York and spent every day underground in the subway to record the traffic flow in order to determine the points of decision where the signs should be placed,” Mr. Vignelli said in an interview.

Converging divergent ideas

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 09:31:32 -0500

Converging divergent ideas:

Design’s aim often is “aesthetic beauty, exceptional user experience, those types of things.” Designers thrive on divergent thinking. At the same time, engineers want to produce things that are durable, reliable, on budget and delivered on time. They rely more on convergent thinking, on finding an established rule of thumb.

- Marco Perry of Pensa

The Scale Every Business Needs Now - HBR

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:10:56 -0500

The Scale Every Business Needs Now - HBR:

Here’s what the economic historians of the 23rd Century are going to say about the 20th.

“They built giant, globe-spanning organizations, that employed tens of thousands of people working around the clock, to produce… sugar water, fast food, disposable razors, and gas guzzlers. Perhaps the defining characteristic of the paradigm of 20th Century capitalism was its astonishing lack of ambition. Rarely in history has such a void, a poverty of imagination been so deeply woven into the fabric of humankind’s economic systems.”

- Umair Haque

My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-1-17)

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 11:42:01 -0500

My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-1-17):

Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz

The Road to Wellville

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:31:00 -0500

The Road to Wellville:

Great systems thinking on addressing the healthcare challenge. A must read, generously excerpted below.

One hundred years ago, our nation’s health looked totally different from today. The six leading causes of death in the U.S. were pneumonia, influenza, tuberculosis, diarrhea, heart disease and stroke. The average life expectancy was 47 years. Ninety-five percent of all births took place at home. People who called themselves doctors hung up their shingles and used the latest potions to heal their neighbors. They got paid when their patients were sick and wrote an entire medical history on a 3x5 index card. Only 10 percent of all U.S. physicians graduated from college. The best doctors who had degrees merged and formed institutions that eventually became Johns Hopkins and Harvard and all the other greats.

In the past 100 years, we’ve sure come a long way. We invented antibiotics and cleaned our water, so there’s much less pneumonia, flu, tuberculosis and diarrhea. The average American dies at 78 years, although a 65-year-old today will live only six years longer than a 65-year-old did a century ago. The 30 extra years of average life expectancy can mostly be attributed to our ability to save young people with antibiotics, clean water and vaccinations. Healthcare has always been best with relatively simple problems: illnesses that can be mitigated with a pill, prevented with a shot, or cured by a scalpel. In fact, that’s why hospitals were built — to treat people with acute conditions such as tuberculosis and pneumonia. Now we’re left with a bunch of infrastructure designed for acute problems but a country full of complex chronic behavior problems — obese elderly folks who’ve terrorized their bodies for a half-century with processed food, stress, and couches. And we don’t have a pill that erases 50 years of unhealthy behavior.

Doctors still have very little idea about how to get you to change your behavior and live better. That’s not what we’ve historically done nor is it part of our training. Also, there’s no money in preventing office visits and surgeries. We prescribe and we operate as much as we can. That is our healthcare “system.” The more diseases individual doctors can diagnose or invent, the more they make from the insurance companies that pay your bills. In reality, our system wasn’t designed to keep you well; it was designed to profit off your sickness.

And how we deliver healthcare hasn’t changed much in the past 100 years. You still see the doctor in an exam room, after you’ve become sick. Doctors still get paid for your sickness. We operate with robots and write about it in your paper chart — only 20 percent of doctors use computers. You call to make an appointment for a mammogram two months out. In the waiting room for your preventive visit, you’re infected by people who are there to be cured of their diseases. The traditional exam room and sick visits made sense when we, as a nation, suffered mostly from acute illnesses. But our country now has different needs.

Let’s pat ourselves on the back. We solved the simple acute problems. Now we have to tackle the complex chronic problems. Currently, healthcare delivery in America is a messy business full of convoluted processes that tries to provide all things to all people. We need to clean up how we deliver healthcare and start creating focused services that allow all players to do what they do best. We need a system designed around our nation’s health needs — chronic care management, prevention and acute care treatment — not history, doctors and their profitability.

The Apple App Store Economy – GigaOM

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:52:08 -0500

The Apple App Store Economy – GigaOM

Twenty words you can't say in Alabama (if you're a Politician)

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:58:02 -0500

Twenty words you can't say in Alabama (if you're a Politician):

“I think there are parts of the Bible that are meant to be literally true and parts that are not.”

Google's Nexus One: Can Openness Win? - Peter Merholz - Harvard Business Review

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 13:13:16 -0500

Google's Nexus One: Can Openness Win? - Peter Merholz - Harvard Business Review

'51-percenters' have five key emotional skills necessary to provide excellent hospitality

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 11:58:00 -0500

'51-percenters' have five key emotional skills necessary to provide excellent hospitality:

To me, a 51-percenter has five core emotional skills. I’ve learned that we need to hire employees with these skills if we’re to be champions at the team sport of hospitality. They are:

Optimistic warmth (genuine kindness, thoughtfulness, and a sense that the glass is always at least half full)
Intelligence (not just “smarts” but rather an insatiable curiosity to learn for the sake of learning)
Work ethic (a natural tendency to do something as well as it can possibly be done)
Empathy (an awareness of, care for, and connection to how others feel and how your actions make others feel)
Self-awareness and integrity (an understanding of what makes you tick and a natural inclination to be accountable for doing the right thing with honesty and superb judgment)

Great advice on hiring consultants too…

curvedwhite: U.S. Data Consumption in One Day by Robert...

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 14:29:12 -0500

curvedwhite:

U.S. Data Consumption in One Day by Robert Vargas/Fast Company

Tableau De L’Histoire Universelle depuis la Creation...

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 18:03:50 -0500

Tableau De L’Histoire Universelle depuis la Creation jusqu’a ce jour

This is a fold-out print depicting all of human history from the time of creation (4693 BC = Adam & Eve; the great flood = 3300 BC) up to the date of publication (1858 by Eug. Pick, Paris). (via BibliOdyssey: Victorian Infographics)

Block by Block - A Quiet Pocket of SoHo - NYTimes.com A puff...

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:46:00 -0500

Block by Block - A Quiet Pocket of SoHo - NYTimes.com

A puff piece on our (Moment’s) street

Bonnier Mag+ Prototype A nice future-looking piece of UI design...

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 10:43:49 -0500

Bonnier Mag+ Prototype

A nice future-looking piece of UI design by Bonnier and Berg